bessy rane sat at the large window of her dining-room in the coming twilight. some twelve months had elapsed since her marriage, and summer was round again. her work had dropped on her lap: it was that of stitching some wristbands for her husband: and she sat inhaling the sweet scent of the flowers, and watching jelly's movements in mrs. cumberland's dining-room, facing her. jelly had a candle in her hand, apparently searching for something. bessy leaned forward to pluck a sprig of sweet verbena, and sat on tranquilly.
at the table behind her sat dr. rane, writing as fast as the waning light would permit him. some unusual and peculiar symptoms had manifested themselves in a patient he had been recently attending, and he was making them and the case into a paper for a medical publication, in the hope that it would bring him back a remunerative guinea or two.
"oliver, i am sure you can't see," said bessy presently, looking round.
"it is almost blindman's holiday, dear. will you ring for the lamp?"
mrs. rane rose. but, instead of ringing for the lamp, she went up to him, and put her hand on his shoulder persuasively.
"take a quarter-of-an-hour's rest, oliver. you will find all the benefit of it; and it is not quite time to light the lamp. let us take a stroll in the garden."
"you are obstructing what little light is left, bessy; standing between me and the window."
"of course i am. i'm doing it on purpose. come, oliver! you ought to know a great deal better than i do that it is bad to try the eyes, sir. please, oliver."
yielding to her entreaties, he pushed the paper from him with a sigh of weariness, and they stepped from the window into the garden. bessy passed her hand within his arm; and, turning towards the more secluded paths, they began to converse with one another in low tones.
many a twilight half-hour had they thus paced together of late, talking together of what was and of what might be. the first year of their marriage had not been one of success in a pecuniary point of view; for dr. rane's practice did not improve. he earned barely sufficient for their moderate wants. bessy, as cash-keeper, had a difficulty in making both ends meet. but the fact was not known; never a syllable of it transpired from either of them. dr. rane was seen out and about a great deal, going to and fro amongst his patients; and the world did not suspect that his returns were so small.
the new surgeon, seeley, had stepped into all mr. alexander's practice, and was flourishing. dr. rane's, as before, was chiefly confined to the lower classes, especially those belonging to the north works; and from certain circumstances, these men were not so supplied with funds as they had been, and consequently were not so well able to pay him. that dr. rane was bitterly mortified at not getting on better, for his wife's sake as well as his own, could not be mistaken. bessy preached of hope cheerfully; of a bright future yet in store; but he had lost faith in it.
it seemed to dr. rane that everything was a failure. the medical book he had been engaged upon with persevering industry at the time of his marriage, from which he had anticipated great things both in fame and fortune, had not met with success. he had succeeded in getting it published; but as yet there were no returns. he had sacrificed a sum of money towards its publication; not a very large sum, it is true, but larger than they could afford, and no one but themselves knew how it had crippled them. bessy said it would come back some day with interest; for the present they had only to keep up a good heart and live frugally.
poor bessy herself had one grief that she never spoke of even to him--the want of offspring. there had been no prospect of it whatever; and she so loved children! as week after week, month after month went by, her disappointment was very keen. she was beginning to grow a little reconciled to it now; and became only the more devoted to her husband.
mrs. rane was an excellent manager in the household, spending the smallest fraction that she could, consistently with comfort. it had not yet come to the want of that. at the turn of the previous winter old phillis became ill and had to leave; and bessy had since kept only molly green. by a fortunate chance molly understood cooking; she had become a really excellent servant. at the small expense they lived at now, dr. rane might perhaps have managed to continue to meet it whilst he waited patiently for better luck; but he did not intend to do anything of the sort. his only anxiety was to remove to another place, as far away from dallory ham as possible.
whether this thirst for migration would have arisen had his practice become successful, cannot be told. we can only record things as they were. with the disappointment--and other matters--lying upon him, the getting away from dallory had grown into a wild, burning desire, that never left him by night or day. that one fatal mistake of his life seemed to hang over him like a curse. it is true that when he penned the letter so disastrous in its result, he had no more intention in his heart of slaying or killing than had the paper he wrote on; he had only thought of putting alexander into disfavour at dallory hall; but it had turned out otherwise, and dr. rane felt that he had a life to answer for. he might have borne this; and at any rate his running away from dallory would neither lessen the heart's burden nor add to it; but what he could not bear was the prospect of detection. not a day passed but he saw some one or other whose face tacitly reminded him that such discovery might take place. he felt sure that mrs. gass still suspected him of having written the letter; he knew that his mother doubted it; he gathered a half suspicion of jelly; he had more than half one of richard north; and how many others there might be he knew not. ever since the time when he had returned from his marriage trip, he thought there had been an involuntary constraint in richard's manner to him; it could not be fancy. as to jelly, the way he sometimes caught her green eyes observing him, was enough to give the shivers to a nervous man, which dr. rane was not. how he could have committed the fatal mistake of putting that copy of the miserable letter into his pocketbook, he never knew. he had tried his writing and his sentences on two or three pieces of paper, but he surely thought he had torn all up and burnt the pieces. over and over again, looking back upon his carelessness, he said to himself that it was fate. not carelessness, in one sense of the word. carelessness if you will, but a carelessness that he could not go from in the arbitrary dominions of fate. fate had been controlling him with her iron hand, to bring his crime home to him; and he could not escape it. whatever it might have been, however--fate, or want of caution--it had led to his being a suspected man by some few around him; and continue to live amongst them he would not. dr. rane was a proud man, liking in an especial degree to stand well in the estimation of his fellows; to have such a degradation as this brought publicly home to him would well-nigh kill him with shame. rather than face it he would have run away to the remotest quarter of the habitable globe.
and he had quite imbued bessy with the wish for change. she only thought as he thought. never suspecting the true reason of his wish to get away and establish himself elsewhere, she only saw how real it was. of this they talked, night after night, pacing the garden paths. "there seems to have been a spell of ill-luck attending me ever since i settled in this place," he would say to her; "and i know it won't be lifted whilst i stop here." he was saying it this very night.
"i hate the place, bessy," he observed, looking up at the bright evening star that began to show itself in the clear blue sky. "but for my mother and you i should never have stayed in it. i wish i had the money to buy a practice elsewhere. as it is, i must establish one."
"yes," acquiesced bessy. "but where? the great thing is--what other place to decide upon."
of course that was the chief thing. dr. rane looked down and kept silence, pondering various matters in his mind. he thought it had better be london. a friend of his, one dr. jones, who had been a fellow-student in their hospital days, was doing a large practice as a medical man in the neighbourhood of new york: he wanted assistance, and had proposed to dr. rane to go over and join him. nothing in the world would dr. rane have liked better; and bessy was willing to go where he went, even to quit her native land for good; but dr. jones did not offer this without an equivalent, and the terms he named, five hundred pounds, were quite beyond the reach of oliver rane. so he supposed it must be london. with the two hundred pounds that he hoped to get for the goodwill of his own practice in dallory ham--at this very moment he was trying to negociate with a gentleman for it in private---he should set up in london, or else purchase a small share in an established practice. anything, anywhere, to get away, and to leave the nightmare of daily-dreaded discovery behind him!
"once we are away from this place, bessy, we shall get on. i feel sure of it. you won't long have to live like a hermit, from dread of the cost of entertaining company, or to look at every sixpence before you lay it out."
"i don't mind it, oliver. you know how sorry i should be if you thought of giving up our home here for my sake."
"but i don't; it's for my own as well," he hastily added. "you can't realize what it is, bessy, for a clever medical man--and i am that--to be beaten back for ever into obscurity; to find no field for his talents; to watch others of this generation rising into note and usefulness. i have not got on here! madam has schemed to prevent it. why she should have patronized alexander; why she should patronize seeley; not for their sakes, but to oppose me; i have never been able to imagine. unless it was that my mother, when fanny gass, and mr. north were intimate as brother and sister in early life."
"and madam despises the gass family and ours equally. it was a black-letter day for us all when papa married her."
"that is no reason why she should have set her face against me. it has been a fatal blight on me: worse than you and the world think for, bessy."
"i am sure you must have felt it so," murmured bessy. "and she would have stopped our marriage if she could."
"whoever succeeds me here will speedily make a good practice of it. you'll see. she has kept me from doing it. there's one blessed thing--her evil influence cannot follow us elsewhere."
"i should like to become rich and have a large house, and get poor papa to live with us," said bessy hopefully. "madam is worrying him into his grave with her cruel temper. oh, oliver, i should like him to come to us!"
"i'm sure i wouldn't object," replied dr. rane good-naturedly. "how they will keep up the expenses at dallory hall if this strike is prolonged, i cannot think. serve madam right!"
"do you hear much of the trouble, oliver?"
"much of it! why, i hear nothing else. the men are fools. they'll cut their own throats as sure as a gun. your brother richard sees it coming."
"sees what?" asked bessy, not exactly understanding.
"ruin," emphatically replied dr. rane. "the men will play at bo-peep with reason until the trade has left them. fools! fools!"
"it's not the poor men, oliver. i have lived amongst them--some of them at any rate--since i was a child, and i don't like to hear them blamed. it is that they are misled. misled by the trades' unions."
"nonsense!" replied dr. rane. "a man who has his living to earn ought not to allow himself to be misled. there's his work to hand; let him do it. a body of would-be autocrats might come down on me and say, 'oliver rane, we want you to join our society: which forbids doctors to visit patients except under its own rules and regulations.' suppose i listened to them?--and stayed at home, and let seeley, or any one else, snap up my practice, and awoke presently to find my means of living irrevocably gone?--nothing left for me but the workhouse? should i deserve pity? certainly not."
bessy laughed a little. they were going in, and she--still keeping her hand within his arm--coaxed him yet for another moment's recreation into the drawing-room. sitting down to the piano in the fading light--the piano that richard had given her--she began a song that her husband was fond of, "o bay of dublin." that sweet song set to the air of "groves of blarney," by the late lady dufferin. bessy's voice was weak and of no compass, but it was true and rather sweet; and she had that, by no means common, gift of rendering every word as distinctly heard as though it were spoken: so that her singing was pleasant to listen to. her husband liked it. he leaned against the window-frame, now as she sang, in a deep reverie, gazing out on dallory ham, and at the man lighting the roadside lamps. dr. rane never heard this song but he wished he was the emigrant singing it, with some wide ocean flowing between him and home.
"what's this, i wonder?"
some woman, whom he did not recognize, had turned in at his gate and was ringing the door-bell. dr. rane found he was called out to a patient: one of the profitless people as usual.
"piersons want me, bessy," he looked into the room to say. "the man's worse. i shall not be long."
and bessy rose when she heard the street-door closed.
taking a duster from the drawer, she carefully passed it over the keys before closing her piano for the night. very much did bessy cherish her drawing-room and its furniture. they did not use it very much: not from fear of spoiling it, but because the other room with its large bay window seemed the more cheerful; and people feel more at ease in the room they usually sit in. bessy took as much pride in her house as though it had been one of the grandest in all dallory: happy as a queen in it, felt she. stepping lightly over the drawing-room carpet--fresh as the day when it came out of turtle's warehouse--touching, with a gentle finger, some pretty thing or other on the tables as she passed, she opened the door and called to the servant.
"molly, it is time these shutters were shut."
molly green, in an apology of a cap tilted on her hair, and a white muslin apron, came out of the kitchen. molly liked to be as smart as the best of them, although she had all the work to do. which all was not very much when aided by her mistress's good management.
"you had better light the hall-lamp," added mrs. rane, as she went upstairs.
it was tolerably light still. bessy often did what she was about to do--namely, draw down the window-blinds; it saved molly trouble. the wide landing was less bare than it used to be; at the time of dr. rane's marriage he had covered it with some green drugget, and put a chair and a book-shelf there. it still looked too large, still presented a contrast to the luxuriously furnished landing of mrs. cumberland's opposite, especially when the two wide windows happened to be open; but bessy thought her own quite good enough. of the two back-rooms, one had been furnished as a spare bedchamber; the other had not much in it besides bessy's boxes that had come from the hall. richard had spoken kindly to her about this last chamber. "should any contingency arise; sickness, or other; that you should require its use, bessy," he said, "and rane does not find it quite convenient to spare money for furniture, let me know, and i'll do it for you." she had thanked him gratefully: but the contingency had not come yet.
into this back-room first went bessy, passed by her boxes, closed the window, and drew the white blind down. from thence into the next chamber--a pretty room with chintz curtains to the window and the arabian bed. dr. rane was very particular about having plenty of air in his house, and would have every window open all day long. next, bessy crossed the landing again to her own chamber. she had to pass through the drab room (as may be remembered) to get to it. the drab room was in just the same state that it used to be; dr. rane's glass jars and other articles used in chemistry lying on one side its bare floor. formerly they were strewed about anywhere: under bessy's neat rule they were gathered into a small space. sometimes bessy thought she should like to make this her own sitting and work-room: its window looked towards the fields beyond dallory ham. often, when she first came to the house, she would softly say to her heart, "what a nice day-nursery it would make!" she had left off saying it now.
taking some work from a drawer in her own room, which was what she went up for--for she knew that oliver would tell her to leave off if she attempted to stitch the wristbands by candle-light--she stood for a minute at the window and saw some gentleman, whom she did not recognize, turn out of mr. seeley's, and go towards dallory.
"a fresh patient," she thought to herself, with a sigh very like envy. "he gets them all. i wish a few would come to oliver."
as she watched the stranger up the road, something in his height and make put her in mind of her dead brother, edmund. all her thoughts went back to the unhappy time of his death, and to the letter that had led to it.
"it's very good of oliver to comfort me, saying he could not in any case have lived long--and i suppose it was so," murmured bessy; "but that does not make it any the less shocking. he was killed. cut off without warning by that wicked, anonymous letter. and i don't believe the writer will be ever traced now: even richard seems to have cooled in the pursuit, since he discovered it was not the man he had suspected."
close upon the return of dr. and mrs. rane after their marriage, the tall, thin stranger who had been seen with timothy wilks the night before the anonymous letter was sent, and whom richard north and others fully believed to have been the writer, was discovered. it proved to be a poor artist, travelling the country to take sketches--who was sometimes rather too fond of being a boon companion with whatever company he might happen to fall into. hovering here some days, hovering there, in pursuit of his calling, he at length made his headquarters at whitborough. hearing he was suspected, he came forward voluntarily, and convinced richard north that he at least had had nothing to do with the letter. richard's answer was that he quite believed him. and perhaps it was richard north's manner at this time, coupled with a remark he made to the effect that "it might be better to allow all speculation on the point to rest," that first gave dr. rane the idea of richard's suspicion of himself. things had been left at rest since then: and oven bessy, as we see, thought her brother was growing cold.
turning from the window with a sigh, given to the memory of her dead brother, she passed through the ante-room to the landing on her way downstairs. mrs. cumberland's landing opposite gave forth a brilliant light as usual--for that lady liked to burn many lamps in her hall and staircases--and ann, the housemaid, was drawing down the window blind. mrs. rane's window had never had a blind.
molly green was taking the supper-tray into the dining-room when she went down. bessy hovered about it, seeing that things were as her husband liked them. she put his slippers ready, she drew his arm-chair forward; ever solicitous for his comfort. to wait on him and make things pleasant for him was the great happiness of her life. after that she sat down and worked by lamplight, awaiting his return.
whilst dr. rane, walking forth to see his patient and walking home again, was buried in an unpleasant reverie, like a man in a dream. that one dreadful mistake lay always with heavier weight upon him at the solitary evening hour. now and again he would almost fancy he should see edmund north looking out at him from the roadside hedges or behind trees. at any sacrifice he must get away from the place, and then perhaps a chance of peace might come to him: at least from this ever-haunting dread of discovery. he would willingly give the half of his remaining life to undo that past dark night's work.
